Sunup

The dismal dreary mental sink

That for sleep passes unto one,

Dissipates upon the pink

Apparition of the sun.

Within my soul I forward stride

Winged with confidence each side:

It’s the first of every prayer!

Hardly set off from the sands,

I take footsteps in new lands

In my reason’s footsteps bare.

Greetings to you! sleeping still

Amid your twinning smiles there,

Similitudes of friendly skill

That among words shine forth rare!

In the buzzing of the bee

I’ll have you in baskets three,

And upon the trembling rung

Of my ladder that’s gold-plated,

All my prudence evaporated,

My pale foot’s already hung.

What a sunup on these hindquarters

That are starting to just quiver!

Already stretch out into parties

Some who seemed asleep forever:

One is gleaming, another yawns;

And a tortoiseshell comb upon,

Mislaying all its vague digits,

Nigh yet unto the dream,

The lazing one joins that beam

Unto its voice’s premises.

What! it’s you, scarce woken up!

What were you at, all night long,

Soul’s mistresses, Ideas worked-up,

Courtesans just for a song?

—Nothing but good, comes in answer,

Our undying presences

Your roof never have betrayed!

We were never gone far-off,

But spiders in the darkness of

Your own self deeply-laid!

Won’t you be with joy itself

Drunk! to see from shadow come

A hundred thousand suns of silk

On your enigmas’ woven sum?

What we’ve done regard you now:

Over your abysses how

We’ve stretched out our primitive lines,

And taken captive nature nude

In a weft tenuously made

Of trembling preparations...

All their fabric spiritual,

I rend, and go off searching long

In my forest sensual

For the oracles of my song.

Being! Universal ear!

The whole soul makes way from here

To the farmost of desire...

Listening it harkens me

And at times my lips would seem

Its quivering to grasp entire.

Behold my shady vintages,

Cradles of my fortunes’ cast!

Numerous are the images

As the regards upon them placed...

Every leaf presents to me

A wellspring of complaisancy

Whence I quaff this frail noise...

All to me is pulp, all seed.

Every calyx asks of me

That for its fruit I wait at poise.

I am not afraid of thorns!

Waking is good, however hard!

These ideal plunderings

Need not have one by the card:

There’s not for ravishing a world

Of woundedness so deeply furled

But to the ravisher it be

A most fecund woundedness,

And his own blood is assuredness

That the true possessor’s he.

I approach the clearness there

Of the pool invisiblest

Where my Hope goes swimming fair

Borne along upon its breast.

The neck cuts into time gone vague

And lifts gently up that wave

Made by a neck none’s equal to...

It feels below the wave so sleek

Infinite profundity,

And quivers from the very toe.

Paul Valéry